A CENTURY OF SERVICE

We thank the Junior League of St. Paul for providing a century of service to the community.

The organization, which celebrated its history and contributions with a reception earlier this month, long has focused both on volunteer efforts to improve the lives of women and children and on giving members opportunities to develop leadership skills.

Projects have changed with the times, beginning during World War I, with a Red Cross relief campaign. Now they include efforts to address “food insecurity,” helping to “bridge the gap for students who rely on the school cafeteria as their primary source of nutrition,” President Jill Skogheim told us. Partners in its efforts, which also include helping young people learn to make nutritious meals, include the St. Paul mayor’s office, St. Paul Public Schools and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

The club’s headquarters location since the mid-’90s — a house on Snelling Avenue near University Avenue — reflects its urban-by-choice orientation. Once, Junior League members were looked upon as society women, Skogheim told us. “That’s not the face of who the Junior League is today.”

The organization also has launched a membership campaign in conjunction with the centennial. Information is at jlsp.org.

The centennial celebration will continue through May when the Twin Cities welcome 800 women attending a conference of the Association of Junior Leagues International.

INSPIRING AN OPERA

We’ll let the late Pioneer Press columnist Don Boxmeyer set the stage:

“There is a deep crease on the face of the East Side of St. Paul, a steep ravine, a gulch, a canyon where the Scandinavians, the Irish, the Italians and the Mexicans once dwelt. No one’s there now, except the ghosts of the lost neighborhood known as Swede Hollow,” he wrote in a column in 1999. “The Hollow has not been inhabited since the middle 1950s, but it becomes more important each year in the memories of those who grew up down there, those who cherished the Hollow but whose dream it was to one day move ‘up on the street.’ ”

Next month, “Swede Hollow,” an opera by local composer Ann Millikan, returns for performances at 8 p.m. Nov. 4 and 5 at the East Side Freedom Library. The reprise of Millikan’s work, which premiered in 2012 in Swede Hollow Park, is timed for the 60th anniversary of the fire that removed the last of the homes from the Hollow.

When it was “condemned by the health department and put to the torch by the city in 1956,” there were only 13 homes left in the neighborhood, Boxmeyer wrote.

The libretto follows the lives of fictionalized immigrants who made their home in Swede Hollow during its 100-year history, according to the library’s website. The opera’s final chorus, Dakota Land, “celebrates the original inhabitants of the region” with a text by Anishinabe poet Marcie R. Rendon.

Reservations are at brownpapertickets.com. The performance is free, but a donation is suggested.

And it’s not the first time the neighborhood has provided inspiration for the arts. The play “Swede Hollow: The Lost Immigrant Village of St. Paul” had its world premiere on the History Theater stage in 1999. It was followed a few seasons later by “Christmas in Swede Hollow.”

COMMUNITY IMPACT

The recently released 2015 Community Impact Report from the Greater Twin Cities United Way highlights some important factors about life here — and good work to help us deal with them:

One in four people in the nine-county metro area — and 20 percent of those in the region’s suburban communities — live in poverty.

There is a 10-year gap in life expectancy between high- and low-income people.

Workers of color, including American Indians, earn $31,660 less in median annual income than white workers.

31 percent of students of color, including American Indians, do not graduate from high school on time.

Among its efforts in response, the United Way says it:

Reached 1 million people through its investments in more than 370 education, jobs and safety-net programs.

Mobilized more than 100,000 volunteers in 2015, with their efforts providing $3.5 million in value to the community.

Made more than a half-million referrals, via its 2-1-1 call center, for essential needs, including housing, utility assistance, food access and health care.

A ‘REVERSE’ FOOD TRUCK

In a twist on the food-truck trend, Spire Credit Union has a vehicle visiting area community events, including recent east metro stops in Falcon Heights and Woodbury and at CHS Field in St. Paul. The idea is to use it as a “reverse” food truck, giving away snacks and other items at events and collecting canned goods for local food shelves. The vehicle is intended to be the next stop along its “journey of giving back,” the credit union says in an online notice.

A ‘BLUE’ MASS

Archbishop Bernard Hebda will celebrate a “Blue Mass” honoring the work of police officers and first responders and welcoming their families and the public. It will take place at 5:15 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Cathedral of St. Paul.

The Mass is offered, says a notice on the Cathedral website, to honor our public servants’ courageous service and ask for “God’s protection and blessings as we all work together to build up the common good.”

Further, chimes of freedom flashing and the Swedes took note, Opinuendo sayeth not.

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